GM Bold Strider's PFS 01-53 Echoes of the Everwar, Part IV - The Faithless Dead (Subtier 10-11) (Inactive)

Game Master rpblue

I saw that! Looking forward to it. Heh, it'll be good to meet you vocally, if not in person.

Hmm... this is the first time I've used or seen Dominate in play. Can't say I see what the big deal is all about when everyone complains about "Watch out when your big dumb Fighter gets Dominated." Guess I figured this spell should actually be good, but it seems to suck pretty bad.

It can be devastating under the right circumstances, but yeah a little preparation by the party can deal with it fairly easily. I also have a considerably higher Will save than most fighters would, and even then it wasn't a guarantee that I'd make either save. Plus, Dragorin's high AC mitigated the potential damage I could do. Against a truly squishy casty (like a wizard) it would have gone much more poorly.

@ Terrill: the vampire dispelled Dragorin's invisibility purge right after he cast it.

Right you are, totally missed that. Too bad.

I honestly don't know for sure. I know Dagorin would get his full round of actions. If Flinders five foots and readies to cast the spell after Hal moves closer, I could see where Flin loses his move action, but the ready interrupts Hal's turn, but shouldn't make him lose an action. Right?

That makes sense. I thought you had already 5' stepped on the map and you need Dragorin to 5' step to you as well, which would require him to start his turn as well.

No, Flinders hasn't moved yet. I was awaiting confirmation from Hal and Dagorin, before I did anything.

Moving this here so as not to clog the Gameplay thread:

Fast dismount and fast mount as free actions, can't fail the check (ride check is +20, DC is also 20). Leap - dismount - move (grab wand) -- mount. RP-wise I'd play that as leaning far-down in the saddle and reaching for the wand while almost upside down, then straightening. If you find that to be too many free actions in a turn (which I would understand) then I'll dismount for now and grab it, re-mounting next turn.

If I'm still alive. :P

I will allow it, however for any future instances I will say that sending your mount to investigate, calling him back, jumping down into his saddle, fast dismounting, picking up something, and fast mounting borders on the "This is longer than 6 seconds" idea of a round and should probably just be simplified.

Ooh, I didn't even think about that part. Yeah, that makes no sense. I'll fast dismount this round and pick up the wand next round.

Oh, come now. I've seen an elf kill an orc with his bow and arrow, ride said dead orc, like a surfboard, down a hill, throw his bow in the air, draw his sword, kill another orc, sheath his sword, catch his bow, pull another arrow, and fire it, killing yet another orc. It took like, 5 seconds! Are we heroes or what!? ;)

Yeah, I don't get that ability until 12th level.

Prowess of Legolas (Ex) A 12th level ranger gains the ability to slay any orc of 12 HD or less that he can see as a free action, using any weapon within reach (including improvised weapons). Additionally, if the ranger is an elf, he automatically succeeds at any Acrobatics, Climb, Fly, Ride, or Sleight of Hand check. Any such check is reduced to a free action.

@ Basalte: I haven't read the spoiler, so I don't know if something else is going on, but if it was just straight HP damage then your effective Con score while raging is 18. If your HP total is in fact -17 and you have rage left, there's a small chance I can save you.

Hal will be running up to where he can see you either way, but his actions at that point depend on whether you're standing.

Good call. I forgot that I needed to factor in the Con bump to his Unconscious threshold.

That being said, would Basalte be at -18 because I forgot to take -1 HP for his withdraw action? Is Withdraw (full round action, thus using your standard action) considered strenuous?

EDIT: Technically, Basalte should have been staggered, thus his Withdraw would have knocked him an extra HP down, killing him, I believe.

Huh, okay.

Actually, can you withdraw while staggered? Wouldn't it have just been a move action then? There may have been an AoO involved, I don't remember.

Diehard allows you to take a standard action, but it requires you to take a -1 HP ding. (I didn't even question it at the time)

Looking back, I don't think withdrawing while under Diehard is legal.

Finally, Basalte prepared a readied action to strike, so even if he doesn't take damage from the move action (acceptable to me since I missed the technicality). His readied action to swing his weapon will ding him -1 HP, killing him.

Basalte: You get one attack against the invisible attacker as your final action.

Actually, there's a couple points that need addressing.

First, I'm not actually dead (yes, again), because as you say, my actual CON at the moment is 18, and I also have the Destiny of the Sands Scarab Sages boon that increases my CON score by 3 when it comes to calculating at what negative score you die. Hence, I'll die at -21.

Withdraw while being staggered is legal, as per withdraw rules: "Restricted Withdraw: If you are limited to taking only a standard action each round you can withdraw as a standard action. In this case, you may move up to your speed." But you're right, I couldn't move that far, only 6 squares away from where I started.

Lastly, I don't bleed thanks to my "Stone Blood" prestige class ability: "Stone Blood (Ex): At 2nd level, the vital fluids and tissues of a living monolith can selectively petrify in response to injury. A living monolith automatically stabilizes when at negative hit points and is immune to continuous damage from bleed attacks (including weapons with the wounding special ability) and ability damage from blood drain." , so maybe this would also work with the 1 damage you take when you act as you're staggered.

1) Nice!

2) Cool! Let's say you stay in the same position as you are now, but you still take -1 HP from the standard action.

3) I don't think this will save you from Diehard penalty as it isn't specified as bleed damage.

4) Your readied action still goes off and you take another -1 HP from it, leaving you at 2 HP from death, right?

One more thing, the -1 hp only happens if you take another action than a move action. Withdrawing could be considered as a move or not, depending on the way you're arguing about it. All up to you.

The quote you provided says it requires a standard action.

"Restricted Withdraw: If you are limited to taking only a standard action each round you can withdraw as a standard action. In this case, you may move up to your speed."

Cool!

Well, at least Hal's wand charge keeps death at bay for a moment longer. Until she fireballs us both to death. :)

Basalte, on your readied action, ROLL WELL.

Oy, the high-level stuff! Nice save, though, Hal!

What the heck should I do to this nasty lady?!

Best I can think of is to cast blistering invective again, because at least it does some damage when I can't see her. Is there any more glitterdust to be had?

I know, crazy stuff. Also, I guess I should've just let that mohrg go - Desmond's paying the price for that. Joining Faraz in Slumberland.

Absolutely right, let's proceed this way then.

Huzzah! That is just about the best result we could have hoped for. Fine rolling Basalte!

Going to see what the result of Basalte's awesome attack is before acting, might be able to dispel her invisibility.

The dice gods have finally answered our plea! Huzzah!

All you had to do was teeter on the brink of death for a few rounds.

But I guess that's the price ya gotta pay.

So, Endless and Bold Strider have at least one thing in common. ;-)

In the spoilers, I killed Desmond with a CDG.

Tektite has shown me a posting by Mike Brock that says that this is frowned upon unless explicitly stated in the tactics for the monsters.

My rationale is that the monster would CDG for four reasons: 1) It reduces the number of opponents (weakest argument as Desmond is out for the foreseeable future); 2) It gives him an ally through Create Spawn; 3) It heals him considerably through the same ability; 4) Mohrgs are creatures created from the souls of particularly heinous individuals like serial killers and mass murderers.

If there is an overriding veto on CDG, then I will just have the creature attack him normally, but I was just curious on thoughts.

I'm cool with it. Desmond stupidly followed the thing up there instead of regrouping, he didn't make his intentions known to his allies, and the Fort Save rolls were not in my favor. I've got enough coin saved up, or prestige to pay for resurrection.

As long as you are okay with it!

Abso-lutely. That's the second time for Des. Maybe the third time will be permanent...maybe.

On the plus side, you can play as the fast zombie!

Just for my own edification, could you link to that post from Mike Brock?

I'm really sorry for you Desmond, of course I'll contribute to your res/resto.

On the mistake chapter, I think we all accepted a little too easily to split and have the terrain play against us. That's a fair lesson, and next time we'll all remain grouped, especially against monsters like mohrg.

-Posted with Wayfinder

So, Endless and Bold Strider have at least one thing in common. ;-)

*whistles innocently*

I don't know what you're talking about.

If it makes you feel any better, BS killed my magus in the same exact encounter in Hinojai. Luckily someone on the team had breath of life for him though.

Edit: Besides, I think Tek has you beat. I think I've killed three of his characters in the past three weeks and one of them is currently turning into a shadow. . . .

We just dominated all our encounters in the previous two scenarios so strongly, that I think I was a little over-confident. Even after being paralyzed once. Hubris should bring such consequences.

@ Desmond: I believe this is the relevant post, but for some reason I have vague memories of a more explicit one.

Partly because of that post above, in this sort of situation I usually just have the baddie munch on a downed PC rather than coup de grace--making it a race to see if the party can save their friend before he gets completely eaten.

That's not a criticism for you, GM, and I do think your outlined reasoning is reasonable. That's just how I would run it.

On the mistake front, definitely agreed. I too went into the battle thinking that this trap for mere commoners would be easily defeated. I was wrong.

I will contribute 1000gp to your raise/restorations. I recommend using gold rather than PP since you get that much gold almost every scenario. At this level, PP is much harder to accumulate. Save it for when you need a resurrection.

Also found the following quote in that thread:

Part 3 of the Everwar can be very deadly in the 10-11 subtier, ask Thea. :-)

This encounter is actually well-thought of. The map is designed to make choices, and both monsters excel in each other's "weak situation": the fireball-casting vampire can toast us if we all remain groupes, and mohrgs are the perfect monsters to take out single targets. Needless to say, we screwed up badly on this one.

My stance on CdG is that unless it's the very last chance of survival for a monster (and the case BS has made is a solid one in this respect), the monster will avoid using these unsavory tactics, at least in a PFS game. For home games, things can be a little different because you know what the impact of a PC death can have on your campaign, and how the players you're always GMing for will react.

I'm the same as you about character death, Hal, apart for a couple PCs which I don't care so much about (Basalte isn't one of those). That being said, in my opinion character death should always be the result of a big mistake, and not happen casually. I think the present situation qualifies.

Stuff

Agreed on all points.

I'm developing a specific fear of CR 8 creatures. Erinyes, greater shadows, vampires, and mohrgs have all caused near-fatal incidents for me and they all have special abilities that are rough to deal with. :)

That may come from the fact that you encounter them when you're not fully-developped in terms of build and gear. Erinyes are much easier to deal with once your melee fighters have a reliable way of flying, which may not be the case at levels 6-7.

Weighing in late, but I think Bold Strider lays out a perfectly valid case for why the morgh would have finished off Desmond. And Desmond has a valid response as well, may the Lady of Graves welcome him.

I'll pitch in for raising him also, if there's a need.

And wow, is this a tough encounter! Very well laid-out, tough opponents, and opportunities for us to work well together and goof up also. I totally thought Desmond was going to join Terrill in focusing on the vampire, since the morgh was at least temporarily out of the mix. Had I thought otherwise, I would have stayed and we could almost certainly have taken it down. In any case, sorry to ditch you, Desmond.

GM, if I'm a zombie now, what can I do?

-Posted with Wayfinder

Isn't it obvious?

Brains! Must eat brains!

Yeah, I guess it should be. I'm just thinking maybe I'd rather have him GMPC me while I'm dead. Otherwise, it feels too much like PvP, and I'm not really down with that.

Apologies for the absence. Sickness overtook me and left me incapacitated for a while.

Hope you get and feel better, GM.

Turns out I got mono. I think the worst symptoms have passed, but supposedly you feel exhausted all the time for the next like two months. It's going to be a pain.